{"id":43283,"date":"2023-10-20T15:27:28","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/former-xero-managing-director-chris-ridd-joins-melbourne-lending-startup-as-it-embarks-on-major-growth-plans-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:27:28","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:27:28","slug":"former-xero-managing-director-chris-ridd-joins-melbourne-lending-startup-as-it-embarks-on-major-growth-plans-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/former-xero-managing-director-chris-ridd-joins-melbourne-lending-startup-as-it-embarks-on-major-growth-plans-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Xero managing director Chris Ridd joins Melbourne lending startup as it embarks on major growth plans – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chris<\/div>\n

Renowned tech entrepreneur Chris Ridd has joined the board of Melbourne-based lending platform Moula to help it transition from a startup into a major company.<\/p>\n

After a tech career spanning over nearly three decades, including turning Xero from a tiny startup of five people into a globally recognised brand, Ridd now dedicates his time to startups like Moula that are on the brink of major growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some very talented entrepreneurs in this part of the world building great solutions,\u201d Ridd tells StartupSmart.<\/em><\/p>\n

Moula<\/a> lets small businesses apply for unsecured loans of up to $250,000 within minutes by sharing cloud accounting or transaction data.<\/p>\n

At Ridd’s first formal address to the Moula team, attended by Victoria\u2019s minister for small business and innovation Philip Dalidakis and other Moula board members, Ridd promised to bring his key learnings, experience and \u201cscars\u201d to help Moula on its journey.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to really help Moula establish new channels and educate small businesses that these services are available,\u201d Ridd says.<\/p>\n

A year ago, Moula closed a $30 million series A funding round<\/a> to rapidly accelerate the growth of its AI lending platform.<\/p>\n

In the past 12 months, Moula has seen data-approved loan applications double and the average expected wait time to access this capital is now less than a week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s unique about Moula is they\u2019ve built an innovative platform that looks at data-driven lending analysis to help clients,\u201d says Ridd.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe amount of investment and effort they\u2019ve put into building their platform is based around analysing accounting data.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Moula\u2019s doing is building long-term play, they\u2019re about responsible lending.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the address, Dalidakis added his support saying Moula is leading the disruption of traditional lending in a way that will be very beneficial for the broader small business sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmall businesses that begin from nothing don\u2019t have any financials that they can lean upon when going to established lenders,\u201d Dalidakis tells StartupSmart.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMoula is now working in that space and saying to a business, \u2018just because you don\u2019t have a lot of history behind you doesn\u2019t mean to say that we don\u2019t think that you\u2019re going to be successful and we don\u2019t want to be a part of you\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

With startups like Moula opening new doors for small businesses to access capital in non-predatory ways, Dalidakis says it will create great change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just providing another product that our business community can take advantage of,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Growing from a startup into a sustainable business<\/h3>\n

In the coming year, Ridd will work with Moula\u2019s team and other board members to help it grow from a startup into a sustainable business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of challenges you find along the way, how you\u2019re building channels, how you\u2019re growing the team,\u201d says Ridd.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next 12 months is really about laying the foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the analysis of accounting data being an integral part of Moula\u2019s product offering, Moula CEO and co-founder Aris Allegos says Ridd\u2019s background in accounting APIs and software systems will be extremely valuable.<\/p>\n

\u201cMe and Chris have an 18 month relationship and through the course of that we\u2019ve gotten to know each other very well,\u201d Allegos tells StartupSmart.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHaving someone of his calibre onboard should enable us to build the company at an appropriate pace but also scale it quick enough to make the most of that opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s what Chris did really well at Xero, he obviously grew it really quickly but he also managed to bring the requisite revenues and business onboard at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter, <\/em>LinkedIn <\/em>and <\/em>SoundCloud.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Renowned tech entrepreneur Chris Ridd has joined the board of Melbourne-based lending platform Moula to help it transition from a startup<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,20,18,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}